No-Bake Birthday Bars

Helllloo.  Happy Sunday!

And happy birthday to my wonderful housemate!  A little bit colder today, but the sun was out, so we can pretend it's spring, right?  Still no oven, so instead of birthday cake I put my own spin on these No Bake Elvis Bars.  Although if you made those, I'm sure they would taste nothing like these, as they call for coconut oil, which I couldn't find for the life of me.

In case you're curious, here is my (very) loose adaptation:

Crust:

1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs

1/5 cup of sugar

6 tbsp margarine, melted

1/2 tsp almond extract

Filling:

3-4 ripe bananas

5 tbsp smooth peanut butter

2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup olive oil (doesn't have to be olive; it was the only thing I had)

Drizzle:

1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate chips

2 tbsp margarine

1 tbsp milk

For the crust, combine all ingredients in a bowl, then press firmly and levelly into a 9" square pan.  Chill in freezer for at least 10 minutes.  It turned out a little too crumbly so I would definitely use a few more tablespoons of margarine in the future.

While the crust is in the freezer, blend the filling ingredients together.  It should have sort of a pudding consistency.  I added more banana/peanut butter as necessary to find the right balance.

Spoon the filling onto the crust and smooth it out with a spatula.  Put the pan back in the freezer and let it set.  This took about 1-2 hours.

Once the bars had set I melted the chocolate chips, margarine, and milk together in the microwave.  Drizzling this on the top was the fun part.  I then put it back in the freezer until the chocolate solidified.  These can be eaten straight from frozen and must be kept in the freezer! (If you leave them out, they will melt and turn into banana pudding!!)

I'd be curious to see if I could make a better crust next time!

As a side note, I noticed while I was making these that they are really similar in principle to the banana squares I made a few weeks ago....Maybe I just have a thing for banana, chocolate, and peanut butter combined.  But then - who doesn't???

Ta-ta-for-now!

~

"a good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures"

Well boss, how's about yea?

I'm feeling a little...green.  Aye, and Irish too!

And what a better way to get in touch with my Irish side, than by baking a something green on the eve of St. Patty's??

Sooooooo I was a bit worried about how I would ever be able to blog again, since my oven is BROKEN.  I mean really, whyy?? Why would it decide to break down the week before St. Patrick's Day?  Honestly, it should know me better than that.

Anger aside, I had to get creative, and find something that didn't require an oven.  Because obviously I can't go without some green delicacies on the one day I get to pretend to be Irish (who knows why).

So here it is: a green no-bake cheesecake adapted from this Martha Stewart recipe.

It's kind of cheating, a no-bake cheesecake.  You use cream cheese and condensed milk instead of real cheese, but still - the batter tasted amaaaazing.  I'm slightly impressed with my first fake cheesecake.  I can't wait to eat it tomorrow. 

My apologies for the lack of pictures; the cake is still chilling, so I can't release it from its springform prison just yet.

Oh and in case you didn't pick up on it, the title is an Irish limerick.  There's a tonne more on this lovely site.  I suggest stopping everything you're doing tonight, and memorizing the whole list.  That way you can impress people with your *cough* long-lost-Irish heritage.

Have a good week, and "take her handy" tomorrow!

~

blueberry icebreaker

Hellooooo.  Hope you are all enjoying your Sunday evening.  I personally love this time of year; optimism is sky-high as the days get longer and the sun gets stronger.

Today's excitement was a fun baking sesh with my new housemate.  What a great way to break the ice and get to know someone!  Its not too hard on the wallet, and afternoon tea was made complete with fresh-baked goodies.

The fruit of our labor today was a batch of whole wheat blueberry muffins, coincidentally from the same blog as my last post.  When my new housemate suggested this, I couldn't say no.

This recipe turned out to be almost as good as the banana squares, but not quite at the same level of perfection.  Overall, they painted a similar picture; healthy, naturally sweet, and the perfect snack.  However, we ran into trouble with the crumble in this recipe, which seemed to be way too wet to even pass as remotely crumbly.

Adding a tad more flour seemed to solve this issue and the muffins turned out gloriously in the end.  Perhaps too sweet for my liking, but I think that's just me being weird.

 

Afternoon tea is a wonderful thing.  I may be biased, but I highly recommend it.

I can't believe I neglected baking for as long as I did.  Food is so beautiful.  I'm not sure I can go more than an hour without thinking about it.

Have a wonderful Monday!  (Remember, it's just one day closer to the next weekend).

Expect something green and Irish sometime in the next few weeks...

~

it's normal for 6 months to go by in a second, right?

 

Good evening! (well, morning I guess).  It's been a while!  To my small following of readers: if you are still with me, I'm impressed.  To say I took a small break from blogging would be an understatement.

Sometimes, life gets distracting, and you forget to do the things you love.  Or maybe you still do, but you don't love them as much.  Anyway, that's what happened to me.  And on this lovely Thursday (Friday now) in Kingston, I remembered I had a blog.

Last week, I bought eggs.  Then I went away for a few days, came back, and found out they expire tomorrow.  So instead of doing everything else I was supposed to be doing tonight, I was frantically searching for recipes in order to not waste my 60 cents worth of eggs.

I was inspired by all the amazing photos on this blog.  Beautiful, mouthwatering stuff.  I highly recommend taking a look.

Landed on this recipe for banana squares because a) I also had ripe bananas, b) they looked good, and (bonus!) they're healthy (until I drizzled them with chocolate sauce).

 

I followed the recipe to a tee, and I have to say the squares are perfect.  Delectable in every way.  And made with whole wheat!  You wouldn't even notice, I swear.

The only thing I did differently was add my own chocolate sauce.  If you know me well, the reason for this is obvious; I am a chocolate addict.  I honestly cannot understand anyone who isn't.

In this case though I think I took my addition too far and the squares might have been better off without the chocolate, but at least it looks pretty.

Maybe I will try using white chocolate next time.

That's all from me for now!  I promise I'll be back sooner next time.

Happy Friday!

~

"if that's a pound cake, this is a tonne cake"

I made a cake for my Mum's birthday this weekend, using this Lemon Poppy-Seed Layer Cake recipe from a Traditional Home magazine (as per her request).  I thought the flavor combination of lemon, coconut, and poppy-seed would make for a nice light dessert to suit the improving weather.

Unfortunately the post title pretty much sums up my emotions towards the final product.  I was a bit disappointed with this recipe!  It was sooooooo dense, and it only got worse the longer I kept it in the fridge. I've come to the conclusion that this is because of the buttermilk, so in future I would omit it completely (perhaps substituting for 2% milk or whipping cream).

I slaved over this cake for houurrs (it definitely looked nice when I was done!).  If you follow the recipe link you might notice that there is no recipe for the icing.  I therefore had to go on a mad hunt to find one and landed on this Canadian Living recipe, which involved egg whites and had no icing sugar (!?).  I've never seen icing made like this before, but as I'd already given up my entire day on this cake I thought I'd try it.  In the end I found it tasted very much like regular icing (and maybe ever so slightly healthier? ...a girl can dream).  It was possibly my favorite part of the cake!

I would love to try this cake again at some point and see if I could make a lighter version.  After all the idea of coconut and lemon does sound wonderful!

~

long time no blog

Helloooo.  Its been a while!  Hopefully your summer's treating you well and you have no cause for summer blues.  Personally I'm in it deep; working two jobs, no longer stuck in a house with nothing better to do but bake.

Unsurprisingly this means my blog efforts have slowed riiight down.  I barely even have the energy to read a book in the evenings (and my summer reading list never ceases to grow).

But this doesn't mean I don't have a use for baking anymore - oh no.  I will take any excuse to make lunches and snacks myself, rather than buying them ready-made.  So I have a couple recipes to share; two kinds of muffins that I keep in the freezer, which makes it really easy to grab-and-go in a mad morning dash to work.

The first are these carrot spice muffins I found on Martha Stewart's webpage.  These were reaaally good.  The only thing stopping me from making them again is the arduous task of grating the carrots.

I also noticed that the batter was quite dry so I added about 1/3 cup more yogurt but in future I think I would have just backed off on the flour.

The second batch of muffins are banana chocolate chip.  A classic in the McFadden house; these have been in my school lunches for as long as I can remember.  I never realized how incredibly easy they were, but I guess that's why my mum made them so often!!

recipe: 

3 over-ripe bananas

1/3 cup softened butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup chocolate chips

Mash the bananas.  Set aside.

Combine flour, soda, and powder.  Set aside.

Cream butter and sugar.  Add egg.  Stir in bananas.

Gradually fold in flour mixture.

Stir in chocolate chips.

Bake in 375 degree F oven for 15 mins.

Store in zip-lock in freezer for up to two months.

Neither option is particularly unhealthy because of the banana and the carrot (though you could omit the chocolate chips if you really wanted), and I baked both batches in tiny muffin trays because I find the ordinary muffin size too heavy for a snack.

These will definitely make an appearance at Ellerbeck! (as if our freezer wasn't full enough already!!)

~